What are HVAC leads from building permits?

They are HVAC and mechanical permits filed with city building departments — furnace and condenser change-outs, new-construction rough-ins, mini-split adds, and similar — each tied to an address and a contractor or owner. PermitGrab indexed 113,952 of them across 496 cities in the last 90 days and turns them into a searchable, phone-matched feed.

How many HVAC permits and contractors does PermitGrab cover?

113,952 HVAC permits over the last 90 days (56,857 in the last 30, 10,845 in the last 7) across 496 cities, plus 51,626 HVAC contractor profiles. 15,751 of those profiles — about 31% — carry a verified business phone number.

How is this different from Angi or HomeAdvisor leads?

Marketplaces sell the same homeowner inquiry to four or five contractors at once, and the cost per booked job often runs $200–$250. PermitGrab is public permit data at a flat $149/month, never resold as an exclusive you bid against, and you reach the market the day a permit files rather than after a homeowner has been auctioned.

Do HVAC leads include phone numbers?

About a third of the time nationally: 15,751 of the 51,626 HVAC contractor profiles (31%) carry a verified, deduplicated business phone, matched from state contractor-licensing files. Coverage is higher in states that publish strong bulk licensing data and lower in those that do not.

Who benefits most from HVAC permit data?

HVAC distributors and parts wholesalers building a clean prospect list; equipment manufacturers and reps targeting installers of specific systems; field-service software, CRM, and financing vendors; and HVAC companies running competitive intelligence on which firms are pulling permits and where housing stock is turning over.

How fresh is the HVAC data?

It refreshes daily. The newest HVAC permits in the feed are dated June 25, 2026, and 56,857 of the last 90 days’ 113,952 filings landed in the trailing 30 days, so you can always work the most recent jobs first.

HVAC Leads: 113,952 Mechanical Permits Filed Last Quarter Across 496 Cities (2026)

By PermitGrab Team • 2026-06-25

Quick Answer

An HVAC permit is a paper trail for a real job: a furnace swap, a condenser change-out, a new-construction rough-in, a mini-split add. PermitGrab indexed 113,952 HVAC permits across 496 U.S. cities in the last 90 days — 56,857 of them in the trailing 30 — alongside 51,626 HVAC contractor profiles, 15,751 of which carry a verified business phone number. It refreshes every day, and unlike a shared-lead marketplace, the same record is never sold to four other people.

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“HVAC leads” means two very different things depending on who is searching. If you run an HVAC company, a lead is a homeowner who needs work. If you sell to HVAC companies — equipment, parts, software, financing, insurance — a lead is a contractor who is actively pulling permits and booking jobs. PermitGrab serves the data layer underneath both: the public building-permit record, cleaned, deduplicated, matched to contractor businesses and phone numbers, and refreshed daily.

Here is what is in the feed right now. Over the last 90 days, PermitGrab indexed 113,952 HVAC and mechanical permits across 496 U.S. cities. 56,857 of those were filed in the last 30 days and 10,845 in the last 7, so the feed is dominated by recent, workable activity rather than stale history. The newest records are dated June 25, 2026, and the collectors run every day.

On the business side, PermitGrab carries 51,626 HVAC contractor profiles built from those permits. 15,751 of them — about 31% — ship with a verified, deduplicated business phone number, matched against state contractor-licensing files. That makes the list usable as a direct call sheet, not just a research database.

Why a permit is a better signal than a shared lead

A building permit is filed at the moment a job becomes real. Someone paid a fee, named a contractor or owner, and committed to work at a specific address. That is a stronger, earlier, and more honest signal than a form-fill on a lead marketplace — and it is public record, so no one can resell it to you at a markup.

The shared-lead model is the thing PermitGrab is built against. On Angi, HomeAdvisor, and similar networks, a single homeowner inquiry is typically sold to four or five contractors at once, and the effective cost of a booked job often lands in the $200–$250 range once you account for the leads that never convert. You are racing four competitors to the phone, and the homeowner has been told to expect five calls. PermitGrab is a flat $149/month, the data is never resold as an exclusive you bid against, and you reach the market the day a permit files rather than after a homeowner has already been auctioned.

Who actually buys HVAC permit data

HVAC distributors and parts wholesalers use the contractor list as a clean, phone-verified prospect file — every active mechanical contractor in a metro, ranked by recent permit volume. Equipment manufacturers and their reps — heat pumps, mini-splits, smart thermostats, IAQ — target the firms whose permit mix shows they install the relevant systems. Field-service software, CRM, and financing vendors prospect the same way: the busiest filers are the ones who need scheduling, dispatch, and consumer-financing tools. And HVAC companies themselves use it for competitive intelligence — watching which competitors are pulling the most permits, in which neighborhoods, and spotting areas where housing stock is turning over and systems are due for replacement.

How it works

PermitGrab pulls each city’s official permit feed — ArcGIS, Accela, Socrata, Tyler EnerGov, OpenGov and others — on a daily cadence, normalizes the records, isolates the HVAC and mechanical trade category, and builds a contractor profile per business. Where a state publishes a bulk contractor-licensing file, PermitGrab matches it to attach a verified phone number. You browse it by city, filter to HVAC, and work the freshest permits first.

The biggest HVAC markets right now

HVAC permit volume over the last 90 days is led by New York, NY (8,818 permits), San Jose, CA (4,134), Fort Worth, TX (3,944), Portland, OR (3,867), Austin, TX (3,194), Cape Coral, FL (2,839), Los Angeles, CA (2,544), and Memphis, TN (2,209), with Chicago, IL and Las Vegas, NV close behind. Every one of the 496 active cities has its own live page.

If you want to go deeper on method, see how to get contractor leads from building permits and the parallel roofing contractor leads breakdown.

The honest limit: PermitGrab tells you who is filing and where, with a phone number about a third of the time nationally (higher in states with strong bulk licensing data, lower elsewhere). It is a daily, never-resold, flat-rate feed of real permit activity — not a guarantee of a booked appointment. For the buyers above, that trade is the entire point.